QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; At the cocktail party in Hong Kong I am the one who asked you how China should proceed to make the yuan a reserve currency. You said the rule of law must first protect property and surprisingly you said to issue commodity contracts redeemable in gold. Well, everyone knows whatever you seem to advise China does and very fast. The news is they will now do exactly that. Start a oil contract redeemable in gold. Can you explain why you took this position? You were surrounded at that moment and did not explain in detail why oil should be redeemable in gold.
DK
ANSWER: It was not based upon the rise or fall of gold. The objective is to establish the yuan as a reserve currency until we reach the Monetary Crisis Cycle conclusion. The logical step is to try to boost the yuan as a redeemable reserve currency with stability. You either PEG it to the dollar (unwise for political reasons) or you “LINK” it to gold – but do not PEG it to gold. If you attempt to PEG the yuan to gold, that would fail for you are making the same mistake as Bretton Woods. The only possible way is to “LINK” it to gold but on a floating exchange rate. That way you are encouraging confidence in the yuan allowing it to be redeemed on a floating basis with gold. Hence, the political risk of the currency is reduced for it could become possible that the currency system breaks apart and politically currencies could be politically frozen and nonredeemable.
This is a long-term structural reform. Do not expect it to be a real game-changer just yet. There will be hype, of course, but we are looking at structural reforms that will take some time. Naturally the hype will claim this is the end of the “petro dollar” for they will use any excuse to call the dollar down. They do not understand that ONLY a rising dollar will break the world monetary system. A lower dollar will buy everyone a lot more time because most foreign borrowing is in dollars. They also are living in the past. The USA is now a net exporter – not an importer.
